


Rediscoveries

by whitefawns



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-03-23
Updated: 2013-03-23
Packaged: 2017-12-06 04:40:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/731536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whitefawns/pseuds/whitefawns
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A devastating war had just ravaged the place they both had called home in the past, but that did not matter anymore.  All that mattered was the whispering of their skin and the murmuring of their soft sighs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rediscoveries

**Author's Note:**

> I've been a pretty longstanding A/G shipper and know way more than I healthily should about the two of them, but this is my first go at fic about them, so please be gracious with your responses whether they get back to me or not. More importantly, I hope you enjoy this as much as I did writing it! Thank you!
> 
> It's even better if you listen to the Bombay Bicycle Club version of "Little Talks" by Of Monsters and Men while you read it; that was my soundtrack song for writing this.

It was platonic. Completely platonic. Both of them refused to admit otherwise.

He was just a man, a smith, if one wanted to get technical. She was just a woman; her trade was nothing to be looked into, nothing that one should look into in the first place.

A devastating war had just ravaged the place they both had called home in the past, but that did not matter anymore.  All that mattered was the whispering of their skin and the murmuring of their soft sighs.

She was headstrong and wily to the touch. Whenever his hands glided ever so lightly across her frame, she pulled back, not fearfully, but almost daringly. When he let out another groan of exasperation (he had lost count after the second one), she giggled softly, amused at his frustration.

Although it seemed as if this was merely but a game to her, it was far from it. Her keen senses allowed her to understand qualities of him that he probably wasn’t aware of himself. His paced, deep breathing told her that he had an ample frame, and the smooth ripples of muscle along his arms, most noticeable on his right arm, seemed to sing soft verses of a tale of a smith who had forged his own life into his trade.

The touch of his rough, calloused hands electrified her and sent her into embarrassing bouts of breathlessness, making her jerk simply because something that felt so good was almost foreign to her after what seemed like an eternity of fear and pain.

He could not see her, nor could she see him either. They were partaking in some licentious form of intimacy, if one could even call it that. It was something that was common in Braavos and had even been born in the royal chambers of Lorath. Their devotion to their divinities had led them into a communal strife for perfection and all things godlike, resulting in numerous activities, no matter how discreet, to evolve into more ethereal and unperceived enterprises.

One being a more subtle, but still (and maybe an even more so) engaging way of foreplay, where blindfolds were worn during the interaction to disguise each participant’s identity from the other; the better the sex, the more godlike the participants. Soon such a practice seeped into the public, and it became a typical, and considerably more moral, form of prostitution. Women were chosen by their brothel’s hostess, according to the customer in order to provide a proper playing field for each participant.

He still had some morals even after the brutal warfare he had forcibly partaken in with the Brotherhood back in Westeros, and he preferred that the practice was much fairer than what his mother had been involved in all those years ago.

Finally, after enough light grazing of his fingers, she did not jump from his touch. Hesitantly, he brushed the soft skin of her arms, feeling an occasional scar or two. Once he had moved past her shoulder, he traced her bony collarbone before carefully fingering the long strands of her hair. It wasn’t soft, although it felt as if it had been one day, but still, it was coarse and stringy. He imagined she had some array of straight yet tousled tresses of a woody shade of brown; he had always liked girls with brown hair, although he never knew why.

After she submitted to his careful hands, she presumed it was her time to break the unbearable indecisiveness between the two of them; him simply playing with her hair was much too soft for the time being.

She swiftly leaned in close, sensing where his head was by the sound of his breathing, and barely pressed her lips against his mouth before leaning back slightly and inclining her forehead against his, smiling softly.

In that brief moment, he realized that she had granted him her permission to do as he pleased, as long as she consented, and he was anything but reluctant to dipping his head just a bit more and returning the kiss. He kissed her deeply, almost depravedly, as if it was something he not only wanted but needed.

Not only had she uncovered a part of his personality in his earnest at returning her peck on his lips, but she was able to piece together what the man before her looked like too. His overgrown stubble was rough and thick and tickled her face in the most excitable ways. His mouth was incredibly warm and inviting, spurring her tongue to swiftly dart in between his lips.

He shifted in surprise, but nonetheless returned the favor, and in no time they were nipping at each other heatedly. His huge hands caught her face in a flourish, and he threaded his firm fingers through her loose hair. Her smaller, lighter hands rushed at his chest to untie whatever possible garment he was wearing, and after a few fumbles with the laces, she had the shirt in her fists, urging him to move his bulky arms so she could take it off.

He sighed at her impatience but still moved so she could slip the shirt off, only to reach for her own garments and make the playing field more equal.  He reached for her back to undo the laces of some ragged gown he imagined her to be wearing, but to his astonishment, there were none present. He hardly believed a girl of her seemingly small stature in a shirt and breeches, but to prove the point, she laughed out loud, grabbing his hands and setting them on the laces of her breeches.

They were already loosened from the action that had been occurring previously, but nonetheless his large fingers tangled themselves in the process of untying each lace one by one. Still, they were undone in little enough time, and his hands skimmed over the undeniably silky skin of her waist. His touch proceeded to roam the length of her hips, and she gasped softly when they lighted upon the two indentations in her lower back.

He smirked at her inability to control her desire, and in response she quickly traced her fingers along the length of his side, gliding up his sinewy back until she reached the back of his head where she grabbed the thick, loose curls beneath and smashed his lips against hers.

Their noses did much more then brush; their lips did much more than kiss. It was hungry and deep and needy to a point that neither of them would ever admit. In the midst of this ongoing collision of a kiss, inevitably their tightly knotted blindfolds that guarded either of their identities guilelessly slipped off and floated to the surface of the bed.

Neither of them noticed of course; both of their eyes were tightly shut. She bit his full lower lip, and he let out a soft groan before acquiescing and resting his forehead against hers, his lips still touching hers.

Unthinkingly she pulled back, her silvery eyes flittering open, and before she could close them, his eyes, which looked as blue and deep as an ocean, connected with hers.

Instantly, the atmosphere grew tense with revelation but not anxiety. Both of them couldn’t quite place why that was; they were equally surprised but neither of them was so startled and unsettled as to even shift positions. They sat there, simply observing the other, before uttering a single word.

The first thing he noticed about her was her eyes, those quick, flashing eyes as silver as the metal he forged and caught nothing unnoticed. Her face was longer and almost hollow from aging, and her body was still much smaller than his, but nonetheless nimble and lean. Unsurprisingly, her hair was just as he imagined it, yet that was all he could collect since their eyes had seemed to form a bond bound with love and pain and fear and relief that had no plans on breaking.

He looked familiar and completely foreign to her all at once. He was much bigger; the teenage boy with the full face and reticent demeanor had disappeared. In its place was a man, a very comely man at that, with an acute jawline framed with dark stubble and blue eyes buried with newfound as well as past emotion. His hair was still shaggy and loose, but it was nothing near the boyish rumple it had been before. She could not break eye contact with him; he seemed to negate every single thing that she had learned from her training in Braavos just by merely looking at her.

He was overcome with relief at the existence of her that he had wondered about for the past decade, as she was with him (no matter how earnestly she had attempted at stifling the thought of him it had refused to abate over the years). Undoubtedly they found another in the most incomprehensible way possible, but neither of them could rightfully say they regretted it.

Finally, after what seemed like a small eternity she presumed someone had to speak, and if it was going to be someone, there was no doubt he had retained his introverted persona, making her ask the inevitable question.

“Gendry?” she whispered cautiously, but not so much indecisively. She was unable to prevent her voice from wavering; his eyes felt as if they were recording every moment of her life since he had last seen her without even exactly knowing what had occurred.

“Arya,” he murmured, swallowing deeply. He sighed softly at the sound of her voice; even as a young girl she had never sounded so bated and fragile. Her emotions painted her face like a canvas covered with harsh, dark marks full of pain and fear and suffering, and it made his heart sink like nothing else had before.

Still, he saw bright strips of the strong girl he had known so long ago, and it merely made him yearn to reach out to her even more. He had lost faith in the gods or R’hllor or whomever people used as an excuse for the devastation of the past war, but he harbored an inkling that this encounter was meant to happen. Whether it was for her mending, or his own, he didn’t know, but he felt drawn to her more than he had in all the time they had spent together before.

Involuntarily, his hands reached out to cup her face, and for the first time, Arya did not flee from her emotions, or from someone who had cared for her in a time she could only vaguely remember, and she sunk into his caress and let out an enormous exhale of comfort that she had not felt since that horrific day in the Sept of Baelor.

His hands only held her face firmer than before.

 


End file.
